Paul Bert

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Paul Bert
Paul Bert's statue in Auxerre

Paul Bert (born October 17, 1833 in Auxerre , † November 11, 1886 in Hanoi ) was a French physiologist and politician .

Life

Bert began studying at the École polytechnique in Paris with the aim of becoming an engineer. However, he soon switched to law studies and finally, under the influence of Louis Pierre Gratiolet, to science and medicine , focusing on physiology. He was a student (and from 1868 assistant) of the physiologist Claude Bernard . In 1863 he received his doctorate in medicine with his dissertation De la greffe animale . In 1866 he received his doctorate in natural sciences, the subject of this dissertation was Recherches experimentales pour servir à l'histoire de la vitalité propre des tissus animaux . He was appointed professor of physiology and successor to Bernard at the Sorbonne in 1866 in Bordeaux , where he taught zoology and physiology, and in Paris in 1869 . From 1882 he was a member of the Académie des sciences .

After the collapse of the Second Empire in 1870, Bert was also politically active as Léon Gambetta's partisan . In his cabinet he was Minister of Education in 1881/82. Along with Jules Ferry, Bert is considered to be the founder of the compulsory free state school. As a staunch opponent of clericalism , he fought against religious instruction in schools. For him science and religion were incompatible.

In early 1886 he became a government representative in Annam and Tonkin . French colonial rule there was threatened by political unrest against the colonial power and pogroms against the Christian minority. Bert was one of the architects of a new system that sought to integrate the old power elites of the mandarins and the monarchy into the colonial state. Bert died in the colony in November 1886 of dysentery, according to contemporary sources.

plant

Bert made significant discoveries about the effects of air pressure on the human body. In particular, he was the first to identify the important role nitrogen plays in decompression sickness, and demonstrated that if the pressure was reduced gradually, the incidence of problems during decompression could be reduced. In his decompression chamber he also examined the effects of reduced air pressure on the animal and human organism. He found that it is less the low air pressure than the low partial pressure of oxygen (below 35 mm Hg) that inevitably leads to death. From this he concluded that one can counteract altitude sickness by increasing the oxygen concentration in the air we breathe. That was an important finding for the aerology that was just emerging . With the help of carried oxygen, scientific balloon flights could be carried out at greater heights. Joseph Crocé-Spinelli and Théodore Rivel , who took advice from Bert, reached an altitude of 7,300 m in 1874 with oxygen. On a second trip in 1875 (together with Gaston Tissandier ) they even reached 8,600 m, but were killed because, despite Bert's warnings, they had ascended with an insufficient supply of oxygen.

Paul Bert also did research in the field of anesthesia , in particular he examined anesthesia using nitrous oxide . The Paul Bert effect is named after him.

Publications (selection)

  • La Pression Barometrique (1878)
  • l'Instruction civique à l'école (1882)
  • De la greffe animale . (1863)
  • Research experimentales pour servir à l'histoire de la vitalité propre des tissus animaux . Paris, Impr. E. Martinet (1866)

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ KW Taylor: A History of the Vietnamese. Cambridge, 2013, pp. 477f
predecessor Office successor
Jules Ferry Minister of Education of France
November 14, 1881 - January 30, 1882 		Jules Ferry
personal data
SURNAME Bert, Paul
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French physiologist and politician
DATE OF BIRTH October 17, 1833
PLACE OF BIRTH Auxerre
DATE OF DEATH November 11, 1886
Place of death Hanoi